PEXA is pleased to present the next release of the PEXA System, Release 7.0, scheduled for business go live Monday 6 November. In this release, PEXA introduces the following enhancements:

Key Highlights

Only the Responsible Subscriber is now required to sign Lodgement Instructions

PEXA has reduced the amount of signing and resigning by implementing a new lodgement instructions rule. This new rule ensures that only the subscriber who is responsible for the Workspace, as noted as Responsible Subscriber in the Lodgement Instructions, will be required to sign the Lodgement Instructions.

Efficient Signing: View all Workspaces that documents/FSS ready for signing. Allow you to sign and navigate to the next workspace that is ready for signing

We have introduced a new Ready to Sign Dashboard. This Dashboard displays all Workspaces that have either documents or FSS to sign, or both. You can select the Workspaces you wish to sign (or select all Workspaces on the page) and click on the ‘Sign Selected’ button to begin signing.

Files can now be attached to a National Mortgage (NSW & SA)

In NSW and SA additional terms and conditions can now be uploaded in PDF format to the Files screen and attached to a National Mortgage.

New document in Victoria – Standalone Survivorship Application (VIC)

PEXA now supports a standalone Survivorship Application in Victoria. In this release, the following scenarios are supported:

Standalone Survivorship

Survivorship with Discharge

Survivorship with Caveat

New Document in South Australia – Encumbrance and Discharge of Encumbrance (SA)

PEXA introduces the ability to lodge an Encumbrance and Discharge an Encumbrance in SA. Following this release, you will see the new roles of Encumbrancee on Title and Incoming Encumbrancee when creating a new Workspace in PEXA. This functionality also supports the uploading and attaching of supporting Covenants via the Files screen.

Additional Enhancements

National

Accepting and Changing Settlement Date and Time

Ability to invite a Subscriber to join a Workspace if they have the same ABN as the Subscriber sending the invitation (i.e. a Retail branch of a bank can invite a ‘masked’ Commercial branch of the same bank)

Manually assign a Workspace to a workgroup on accepting an invitation to join a workspace

Select filters on the ‘Ready to Sign’ Dashboard and retain these filters until they are cleared

Incoming Mortgagees can now view a rendered Transfer

Edit the commercial transaction flag

Allocate a Workspace to a workgroup based on the commercial flag

Secondary Lodgement Verification (Please note that implementation of the Secondary Lodgement Verification functionality may be delayed and PEXA will advise once this functionality becomes available.)

Allocate a Workspace to a workgroup based on the transaction type (transfer/non-transfer) (added to release notes 9 Oct)

View the transaction Type (Transfer/Non-Transfer) on receiving an invitation to join a workspace (added to release notes 9 Oct)

Automatically generate a conversation when a Subscriber adds or changes a settlement date or time in a workspace (added to release notes 10 Nov)

Victoria (VIC)

No Nomination required when Transacting Party is CT Controller (VIC)

Change to Issuing Instructions - Represented Party (VIC)

Ability to perform Title verification using Lot on Plan in Victoria (VIC)

Ability to receive interest in land from Vic Land Registry (VIC)

Removal of restrictions on ability of sole traders to represent themselves (VIC)

New South Wales (NSW)

NSW Certificates of Title - Transition to Electronic, CT Direction no longer required for NSW

Enable NSW Titles, currently out of scope for transactions, to still be consented to in PEXA (NSW)

PEXA has reduced the amount of signing and resigning by implementing a new lodgement instructions rule. This new rule ensures that only the subscriber who is responsible for the workspace, as noted as Responsible Subscriber in the Lodgement Instructions, will be required to sign the Lodgement Instructions.

Benefits:

Only the Responsible Subscriber will be required to sign

Only the Responsible Subscriber will be required to resign when Lodgement Instructions are unsigned due to actions from other Subscribers in the Workspace

Changes:

A reduced signature count is now displayed next to the Lodgement Instructions

Only the Responsible subscriber will be presented with the Lodgement Instructions to sign in the signing screen

Don’t forget even if you create the first document and are defaulted to Responsible Subscriber, it is easy to push or pull the role to other Subscribers within the Lodgement Instructions

Dealing Requirements in VIC:The only exception to the above rules is where a dealing requirement is added in Victoria. In this case, all participants in the Workspace will be required to sign the Lodgement Instructions as they do today.

In NSW and SA additional terms and conditions can now be upload in PDF format to the Files screen and then attached to a National Mortgage.The National Mortgage document supports free text terms and conditions up to 4000 characters and PDF file attachments for more detailed or bespoke terms and conditions. For instructions on how to do this please see the help article Attach a PDF file to National Mortgage in NSW and SA.

PEXA now supports a standalone Survivorship Application in Victoria. If a joint tenant on a property title passes away, then the surviving proprietor should make an application to the Land Registry to have the deceased’s name removed, so that only the surviving proprietor’s name is on title.

In February 2018 (Release 7.1), Survivorship with a Transfer document in the same workspace will be supported. During the interim period, please complete a standalone survivorship workspace in advance of a transfer workspace.

Should you inadvertently create a transfer workspace that requires a Survivorship, create an additional workspace and lodge the Survivorship, and the request Land information resupply after successful registration of the Survivorship.

PEXA introduces the ability to lodge an Encumbrance and Discharge an Encumbrance in SA.

An encumbrance can be registered on a title as a restriction regarding the use of the land. It is an agreement creating various obligations on the parties, restricting or forbidding certain acts on the property.

When purchasing a property in a recently developed area, an encumbrance in favour of the developer often appears against the title of the property. Many encumbrances aim to maintain uniformity within the development and are applicable to each and every property in the area. Encumbrances can be seen as a benefit, as they help maintain consistency with certain types of developments.

Other encumbrances can be ‘lifted and replaced’. As the terms specify, they do not run with the title. The existing encumbrance is discharged as part of settlement (i.e., lifted) and a new encumbrance in the purchaser’s name in similar terms is registered at settlement (i.e., replaced).

Following the R7 release, you will see the new roles of Encumbrancee on Title and Incoming Encumbrancee when creating a new workspace in PEXA. This functionality also supports the uploading and attaching of supporting Covenants via the Files screen.

We have introduced a new ‘Ready to Sign’ Dashboard. This Dashboard displays all Workspaces that have either documents or FSS to sign, or both (see help article).

This Dashboard includes a Lodgement Type column which classifies workspaces as having documents that can be lodged ‘Prior to Settlement’ (i.e. Priority Notices, Nominations etc.), at ‘Settlement’ or ‘Standalone’.

You can also select how many records you want displayed on the ‘Ready to Sign’ dashboard (i.e. 5, 10, 15, 20 or 25 workspaces can be displayed).

You can select the Workspaces you wish to sign (or select all workspaces on the page) and click on the ‘Sign Selected’ button to begin signing.

Additional screenshots below:

When you click on theSign Selectedbutton, you will be taken to the signing screen of the first selected workspace. From there you can:

View additional identifying information (shown at the top of the below screen grab)

View how many workpsaces you have to sign and how many have been signed

View the rendered transfer

Click the ‘Sign and Next’ button which will sign the You will them be directed to the next workspace that was selected from the Dashboard.

‘Skip’ signing of a workspace and navigate to the next Workspace that was selected from the Dashboard.

The ‘Ready to Sign’ Dashboard is the first screen in PEXA where filters are retained if you navigate away from the screen. This means that if you set a filter and navigate away from the screen, the filters will still be in place when you return to the screen. You can selectClear Filtersto remove the filter and show all workspaces that are ready for signing.

A red triangle in the corner of the column header identifies if there is a filter on.

It is now easier for you to accept the settlement date and time, and change the settlement date and time.We have exposed the buttons for these two actions in the Financial Settlement screen. For more information, refer to the help article Accept or Change Settlement date and time.

We have introduced the ability for a Financial Institution to invite a ‘masked’ Subscriber (i.e. a Subscriber that can’t be located via the Subscriber search) to join a workspace if they have the same ABN.

For example: If a Retail arm of a bank invites the Business/Commercial arm (who are masked from Subscriber searches) to join a workspace to provide source funds for a residential/commercial transaction.

Members in the role of the Incoming Mortgagee will be able to view the rendered Transfer document once it has a document status of Prepared.

This will allow the Mortgagee to view the consideration and ownership percentage that the solicitor included in the Transfer document. This will assist them in verifying that these details match that of the loan agreement.

Members in the role Mortgagee on Title, Incoming Mortgagee, Consentor, CT Controller and Source Funder will have the ability to change the Commercial transaction flag if they mark the workspace incorrectly when creating/joining a Workspace.

You can change this flag from the Workspace Settings. When the flag is changed the Category column of the ‘Your Dashboard’ is updated to either Retail or Commercial.

Members in the role of the Incoming Mortgagee, Mortgagee on Title, Consentor and CT Controller will have the ability to include the commercial transaction flag as part of the criteria for assigning workspaces to workgroups. This means that when creating or joining a workspace that is flagged as commercial (or not) the workspace will automatically be assigned to the workgroup as defined by the workgroup rules.

Please note that implementation of the Secondary Lodgement Verification functionality may be delayed and PEXA will advise once this functionality becomes available.

This feature will only be available for WA, SA and QLD.

To mitigate issues when a Land Registry is unavailable and a final signature is applied on the day of settlement, PEXA will now perform a Secondary Lodgement Verification on each Document in the Lodgement Case. PEXA currently requires a successful Lodgement Verification to be performed against each Document in the Lodgement Case in order to progress the Lodgement Case Status to ‘Ready’. When there is an unexpected outage with the land titles office, PEXA is currently unable to progress any Lodgement Case Statuses to ‘Ready’ as a successful Lodgement Verification Result has not been received, resulting in documents remaining in ‘Verifying’ status:

Any outages with the Land Registry when final signatures are applied to documents on the day of financial settlement will stop these Workspaces from reaching ‘Ready’ status until such time that the Land Registry’s systems are available once again.

To mitigate issues when a Land Registry is unavailable and a final signature is applied on the day of settlement, PEXA will now perform a Secondary Lodgement Verification on each Document in the Lodgement Case. Once PEXA determines that communications could not be established with the Land Titles Office, the new feature will allow a Lodgement Case to progress to ‘Ready’ where:

The latest Lodgement Verification Result is successful for each Document in the Lodgement Case, and

No Document data has changed since that last Lodgement Verification was performed.

When the Financial Settlement Schedule also reaches ‘Ready’ status, then the Workspace’s status will be ‘Ready/Ready’ and settlement will initiate once the Workspace reaches its scheduled Settlement Date and Time. If the Land Registry’s systems are still unavailable at the time of Lodgement, PEXA will invoke Lodgement Override and proceed with settlement. Lodgement will continually be re-attempted until such time that the Land Registry’s systems are available once again.

Where the Secondary Lodgement Verification has been successful, a banner is displayed to indicate that a Secondary Lodgement Verification has been performed:

When a document is expanded, an informational message is also provided to indicate that a Secondary Lodgement Verification has been performed:

Other items to note:

Where a successful Lodgement Verification Result is returned from the Land Registry after the Secondary Lodgement Verification has been performed, PEXA will update the Documents in the Lodgement Case accordingly with the result from the Land Registry.

To ensure all Lodgement Cases have the latest successful Lodgement Verification Result captured, PEXA will run a Lodgement Verification the evening prior to the workspace’s scheduled settlement date where document data has changed. Lodgement Verification will only be performed on Lodgement Cases in ‘Prepared’ status only.

You now have the ability to include the Transaction type (transfer/non-transfer) flag as part of the criteria for assigning workspaces to workgroups. This means that when creating or joining a workspace that is flagged as having a transfer, the workspace is automatically assigned to a workgroup as defined by the workgroup rules.

From this release, Land Victoria will no longer require a Nomination if the CT Controller is a participant dealing in any of the documents in the lodgement case. This change should result in great time savings for all members operating in Victoria. This will benefit members who usually prepare Nominations, as well as reduce the disruption caused to other members by Nominations being lodged on the day of settlement. For example:

Where a Mortgagee on Title creates a Discharge document, assuming they are the CT Controller, they will no longer be required to also provide a Nomination. This will apply to standalone Discharges, Refinances and Transfers.

Where a Panel Solicitor represents a Panel Master in a Workspace in the role of Mortgagee on Title (or any other role), and assuming the Panel Master has transferred CT Control to their Panel Solicitor, then the Panel Solicitor will no longer be required to provide a nomination.

Where a Conveyancer or Solicitor represents an owner of an unencumbered property, assuming the Conveyancer or Solicitor is the CT Controller, they will no longer be required to also provide a nomination.

To use this feature, please ensure the current CT Controller is a participant in a document in the workspace.

A change to the Issuing instructions, in your Lodgement instructions document, will allow represented parties to be given CT Control, assuming these parties are PEXA Subscribers.

This will remove the need to either issue the CT to paper and maili it to the Panel Master, or issuing CT Control to the Panel Solicitor and then transferring that control to the Panel Master in a separate Workspace.

For example:

Where a Panel Solicitor represents a Panel Master in a Mortgage transaction, the Panel Solicitor will be able to issue CT Control to the Panel Master at the end of the transaction by selecting the Panel Master in the "CT Issued to" field in the Lodgement Instructions.

In a Victorian workspace, you can add a new Land Title by either using the Title Reference or the Lot/ Plan details. You can now enter structured Plan details when workspaces are created on a Parent Title.

Using the lot on plan details, you can now trigger a land title verification with the Land Registry through PEXA. The functionality allows workspace participants to add a title on the workspace using Lot on Plan details.

In Victoria, you can now display interest in land details (Leases and Sub-Leases) on the Land Titles screen. To inform you on all interests on the title, please refer to the new Other Interests section on the Land titles screen.

(Updated 23 Oct) From the 1st of July 2017, NSW LPI no longer allows ADI’s to elect to issue a paper title. All titles are to be issued as eCT, with CoRD issued to the party represented by the Responsible Subscriber. In line with this, from Release 7, the Issuing Details panel on the Lodgement Instructions screen is no longer required and hence will no longer be displayed.

From July 1 2017, NSW does not allow Australian Deposit-taking Institutions (ADI’s) to issue paper titles. As a result, ADI’s are required to lodge electronic CoRD Consent to dealings that will be conducted in the paper channel. To support this, in a NSW workspace in the role of Consentor, you will still be able to create and lodge Consent even if the title is not electronically tradeable.

Please note: This feature was added to the Release Notes 10th Nov 2017

PEXA will now automatically generate a conversation when a Subscriber adds or changes a settlement date or time in a Workspace. This helps provide greater visibility to all Workspace participants of changes to the settlement date and time.

Quickly see the changes to the Settlement date and time and the reason directly from either the Unread Conversations screen or within your Workspace from the Conversations screen. The conversation includes the details of the date change and the reason for the change and is sent to all participants in the Workspace.

This change "Enable NSW Titles, currently out of scope for transactions, to still be consented to in PEXA" is limited to allowing the role of 'Consentor' to create a Workspace using a title that is usually unsuitable for electronic lodgement.

It will facilitate these titles to be consented to paper transactions.

I have a query regarding the change in Victoria - "No Nomination required when Transacting Party is CT Controller (VIC)" - this obviously only covers off transactions being lodged via PEXA? I assume that paper lodgements will still require a standalone nomination (to paper instrument) to be completed where we (Westpac) are the CT controller?

If the CT Controller (the Party in possession of the electronic token that is the proxy for physical possession of the paper title) IS a Participant Dealing in an electronic Lodgement Case then a Nomination to the Lodgement Case is not required. Land Use Victoria (LUV) will take it that the CT Controller is consenting to the transaction.

If the CT Controller is NOT a Participant to a Dealing in an electronic Lodgement Case, then the Participant Dealing must invite the CT Controller into the Workspace to Nominate the title to the Lodgement Case requiring consent of the CT Controller.

For a transaction to be completed via the paper channel, LUV must see the Nomination of the electronic title by the CT Controller to the paper dealing. LUV has no other means by which to discern that the party in possession of CT Cnotrol is consenting to the dealing.

Please let me know if you have further questions or require further clarification.

NSW Certificates of Title - Transition to Electronic, CT Direction no longer required for NSW

When submitting a standalone discharge (ie CT will be unencumbered post settlement), we used to be able to confirm that a Paper CT will be issued. As this option is no longer available to users, is the default for unencumbered CTs to print and deliver a paper CT to return to the client in these circumstances?

In short, earlier in 2017, NSW Land Registry made a change to assign CT Direction. Hence the option was removed from PEXA in Rls 7.

In short, NSW LR will always set CT Direction where an APRA Registered ADI holds CoRD as first Mortgage to 'Issue CoRD and do not print'. In other words, ADI's will only be issued with electronic CoRD. No option will be provided for paper duplicate CT's to be issued to ADI's.

If the title is unencumbered by a Mortgage or the Mortgagee is not an APRA registered ADI, NSW LR will issue a printed duplicate CT. No option will be provided to hold electronic CoRD.